Lacuna
by zomzara
Summary: Having been accosted by a shadowy stranger talking at him in coded riddles, 17yr old Robin's shredded memory is nudged into action. He's determined to uncover why chunks of his memory are missing. His search for the truth leads him straight into trouble.
1. There is Someone Following Me

_This is a rework of a story I wrote a few years ago under a different name. I have kept the bones of it, and altered the rest so that it almost fits into the new series. There are elements that don't fit with the new series, but it can't be helped. The ending of this version will be different from the ending of the story I originally wrote. _

_This story takes place between series 2 and 3. _

1. There is Someone Following me

It's about eight in the evening on a school night, hints of winter in the air. No one knows I'm out. So when a shadowy stranger who's all cape and cheekbones glides across the road towards me, I become very aware of how many streets I am from home.

"Relax, child. Do not move, do not fidget, merely listen. I don't have much time." He has a silky English-gentry voice that rolls off his tongue, smooth like chocolate truffles.

I shuffle backwards, feeling small. He steps forwards, right into my space, right up close. I smell dankness and loft-bound leather suitcases harbouring false widow spiders. There's smoke in the air, hanging still like a curtain, like a grey web spun by those widow spiders.

I take another backwards step that melts into another and another until I pull around into a run, back the way I came. My feet slap against the pavement and echo off the buildings.

"Come now, peasant." I have run full pelt into the same man, six foot two and none of it soft. I glance over my shoulder at the empty pavement, lit orange with a single street light. Drops of sweat prickle on my forehead and then slowly slink down my nose towards my lips, I lick them and taste salt.

I look up at him, the colour from my face draining into the colour of his. His hair is white, brushed long and slickly straight. His skin is smooth as mine. He could be thirty five, or he could be sixty five. He's ageless. His eyes are canyon-deep, deep and dark, dark flecked with coils of gold. They are expressionless, soulless, eyes that could watch a wild wolf ravage a child and never change.

"Please do not fidget," he says, glancing vaguely at my fingers. "It breaks the waves, disturbs my concentration." Then he raises his depthless eyes again and locks them onto mine like a fighter pilot with the enemy on his radar.

I think about striking out at him, giving him a swift knee in the nether-regions. But my muscles feel like lead, and I'm a long way from friends, and I don't think there's much point. I try to yell, but nothing comes, and I realise that I can't move, not even my voice box. His eyes are golden and I cannot move. There's nothing I can do, other than drink in his features, read his expressions. They are so familiar, yet so alien. There is something in my head that is making a connection, but I can't find it. It feels like I'm swimming through blood, trying to figure it out, this connection, this flash of a lost memory.

The man's features bend and flicker and his throat makes a creaky-smooth "ah," sound before he speaks some more. "I forgot. I am not meant to call you a peasant. Now…what was it?" his eyes dart off as the cogs in his brain mesh together and whirr. "Robin!" he says, very glad that he's remembered. He's remembered right. That is my name. But I don't know his. The cogs in my own brain are whirring, searching for his name. I know it. I knew it. It's too cloudy, and I'm too freaked out.

"I see that you have changed, grown older these past few years. Something that you mortals do much faster than I. Or at least that's how it would be if that dratted girl hadn't had her way." It's like he's going to say more. But the air quivers and thunders and screams. His eyes dart and his face becomes panicked. I still can't move.

"She's found me out. The Slayer boy clearly was not a long enough distraction for her." The air screams again, distantly. The man's eyes sharpen and he leans in closer to me. "Robin, this is deadly important: Vlad is in danger. She's been playing with the stakes; putting garlic in his coffin. Nearly three years and no change; still he sleeps. I do all she says just to keep him from harm. But she grows bored. We thought when he turns 16 he would wake, yet his birthday came and went, uneventful. He ages as you do, but that is all. She wants change and she will change him. She stole my strength from the blood mirror, I am powerless. If I make a move then she will make no qualms in slaying him." This is said all very fast, the words bleed together. I lose some of them, the connecting words. It comes out like a code.

His eyes move from mine and jolt around our scene, like he hears something in the shadows. "My son helped you. Now you help him."

And then I am alone. I can move. I take a look around and see a lot of nothing. I didn't even see him take a step away and he was gone, like smoke. I shove my hands deep into my coat pockets and watch my breath make vapour. The wind whispers through the trees and my heart raps bass in my chest. It's time to go home.

All through dinner my head is hidden under clouds. I can't get those words out of my head; the cold man with golden eyes and his coded words. I want to understand them, break them down and sort them out into the right order. My family try to engage me in conversation, but it flies right over me and they give it up.

I don't sleep well. My dreams are infested with echoes of the past. There are things in my head that are hidden under sheets; memories that are blurred. When I was fourteen I suffered from a sudden, unexplained lacunar amnesia. My family suffered from the same thing. But out of all of us, I lost the most time. A year of my life blipped out of my reach. I don't know where I was, what I did, who I was with. Neither does anyone else.

There is a void within me that nothing and no one can fill. Whatever happened in that lost year stole part of me away. I didn't just lose memories, I lost something else. I just can't remember what. All I know is that something is missing, something _other _than my sense of humour.


	2. Change the Record

2. Change the record.

"Have a nice day!" sings my mam as Chloe and I jump down from the van to the pavement outside school. Already, it's not a nice day. There's grey smur in the air that sticks to my skin and makes a damp sheen, like cold sweat glistening on a dying person's forehead.

I make long strides towards the entrance, gaining ground, leaving Chloe to make her way in alone. My school shoes tap the vinyl floor with a faint echo. The corridor is long, grey and empty. I open out my locker and a folded piece of paper falls out and circles towards the floor, I catch it midair. Turning my head one way down the corridor and then the other, I smooth the paper between finger and thumb. No evidence of the author. I unfold it and close my locker. The writing is hurried and hard to read, spidery across the page.

_I've got no time to find you. I'm not sure where it is you eat lunch these days, or what your number is. Wait at the payphone at the roundabout near Station Road. Lunchtime today._

That's all it says. I flick the paper over to see if there's any clue of who wrote it. There's none. The bell splits into the air and my head clicks back into reality. The corridor has started to fill with the morning rush, like a fast tide into an estuary. I open out my locker again to pick up the books I need for first period.

First and second period click by. Break time comes and I stalk over to the bench at the back of school where no one hangs out. Insubstantial white clouds scud fast across the endless grey beyond. I yank down the sleeves of my shirt and pull up my collar.

I'm munching through a Penguin biscuit bar when I notice movement. My eyes go up and see Chloe walking out towards me.

Great. That's all I need.

"Go away, Chloe."

"I've told you, it's not healthy for you to be here, eating away from everybody. It's not good to be away from people so much."

"Change the record."

Chloe stands in front of me with her arms crossed over her chest and one brow raised high. My little sister is getting tall, and her braces have come off, which I have only just now noticed.

I grit my teeth together and let my eyes hover away. They hit the castle up on the hill. I slide my eyes back onto Chloe's and cave.

"It feels like there is this huge thing missing in my brain," I start by saying.

Chloe raises her other brow and sits beside me. "I've often thought that there's a huge thing missing from your brain."

I give her a long glare, and then reply slowly, deliberately. "I'm talking about the amnesia."

"I have it too you know, Robin – maybe not as severe, but I have the same thing. You don't see me sulking around hating everybody. So what, there's some hazy gaps in one year of our lives? Move on. Deal with it."

"I've tried it. It didn't work." I grip the edge of the bench until my knuckles turn white, and watch the ants in the grass near my feet. "I don't think I can move on until I get the straight."

"The straight? What does that even mean? You don't just look funny anymore. You've started to talk funny too."

"The straight. The whole story. I can't move on until these gaps have been filled." I look up at her, studying her like she's a painting.

"How do you intend to fill them?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"I think it's a good idea. You are stagnating. It's time to kick your life into line." She knocks the toes of her shoes together and smoothes non-existent creases out of her trousers. Then she levels a stare my way. "But keep me in the loop. Please, Robin. You're my big brother and I… I worry about you. I don't like you always being off by yourself."

"Don't. I've gotten used to it."

The bell for third sings and Chloe rises to her feet.

"Maybe I'll catch you at lunch," she says, slinging her bag onto her shoulder.

"I'll see you after school. I'm not around at lunch."

"Meeting friends?" she asks cuttingly. I pull a face but don't say anything. "Whatever. See you later."


	3. Keep Up With Me

3. Keep up with me.

I stand at the corner of the roundabout, near to the payphone. My hands are buried deep in my pockets, my shoulders are lazy and my jaw is clenched. I check my watch again. 1:23pm. I'm thinking about bailing. Standing here on the corner of a roundabout is not a fun way to spend lunch, by any stretch of the imagination. I puff my cheeks out and take one step away, off towards the school campus. The phone rings on my second step.

I pause, looking over my shoulder to the payphone. Slowly I turn to face it and stare, balancing on the balls of my feet, on the edge of indecision. The rings peal out into the air, one after another. I think about the note and the weird man last night and what Chloe said. I am stagnating. It's time to kick my life into line. If I don't move now it'll stop ringing.

"…Yeah?" I say into the phone.

"Robin?" The voice is familiar, but I can't pin it. It's not the English-gentry voice belonging to the stranger last night. This voice is younger.

"Yeah."

"There's not much time. I'm calling you in because I need your help. And I know I have no right to ask you. But I'm doing it anyway. There is no one else."

"Who is this?"

"Jonathan." I've not seen him for ages. I'd almost forgotten he exists. "Now listen hard, Robin. I figured that something was going down. Big patches of my memory were missing, dad too. Then he showed up dead, drained dry of blood. He's not the only one. He's part of a growing statistic. But I needed closure. What happened? Why? Who? The police can't figure it out."

My brows ruffle up as I listen to him. His words are falling over each other, the same as the guy last night. He doesn't put a single pause in. There is no beat in which I can get my oar in, so I listen to him spill out to me and try my hardest to follow it. I'm not sure I do a good job.

"It's a vendetta. I don't know the full thing. But she's doing it to get revenge. At least that was how it started. It's possible that she has lost track of where it all started and she's riding the wave that she herself made. Not sure. Doesn't matter."

"I don't think I'm following," I manage to say, eventually. "Start from the top. I need some context. Details."

"No time for details. Here's the context: The Council wanted to know about Vlad; about the Chosen One. They sniffed around the castle. Ingrid wanted the heat off her and her castle. So she fabricated war. So now her side think our side have Vlad. Our side think her side is hiding him someplace in Europe while he sleeps off whatever. Whatever happened with him at the end. It's too vague, too fuzzy and I don't remember the details. But he's still sleeping it off. Yesterday I went to the castle. All my investigations led there, so that was where I went. He's not in Europe under his people's protection. He's in the castle. But the heat is off Stokey. The heat is in Europe, on the war. So no one knows the truth. They are all too distracted."

"Calm down. Slow down."

"But she's thinking of ending it! If I hadn't been at the castle yesterday she might have killed him then, the Count too. But she smelt me and ratted me out, said she was going to kill me. Then she got this sharp look in her eye. I need your help, Robin."

I swap ears and lean against the glass booth wall, and then deploy a softly sober voice. "Who is 'she'? I'm guessing whoever didn't kill you, since you're talking to me and everything."

"Ingrid. Keep up with me."

"Who?"

I hear a sound of annoyance come through the phone.

"Sorry," I mutter, though I'm not sure why.

"Ingrid is toying with me. She let me go because she wanted to play a game, to draw it out. So she's distracted right now looking for me and not thinking about Vlad. But Robin, I think it's important that Vlad is kept safe. Maybe there is hope in Vlad. I think he was chosen for a reason."

There is an empty pause. I have nothing to fill it with.

"Don't you remember any of it?"

"Any of what?"

"You don't remember Ingrid?"

"Never heard of her, or the Vlad person. Some guy mentioned the same name yesterday. Who is this man? I _need _the details, Jonno. Why don't you meet me? If you're running out of coins then we could meet up in school to chat this out."

"Coins are not my problem. My problem is Ingrid. I need to keep on the underneath. I need to stay out of her way. I need to skip out of town more than anything. But it's so skewed. I don't know what to do."

"Neither do I. I understand less than half of what you just said."

"Vlad is strong. He did a good job on everyone's memory.' His tone is laced in disappointment. "Maybe I can't use you after all. I'm sorry to have bothered you." There is a pause. My mind is whirring, spinning around and about. "But, Robin, think about it some more. Push at the gaps in your head and iron them out. If anything comes back to you and you think you can help me, then drop an email my way. You know my address?"

"No." He gives it out and I lodge it into my shredded memory bank. "Jonno; I want to know. There are huge gaps in my memory. Are you saying you can fill them?"

"No time right now. I have to go. Don't come to my place. Don't lead Ingrid anywhere near my Mum. Contact me only via email." The phone clicks and I get an earful of dial tone. In the distance the end of lunch bell peals.

_# a/n_

_Thanks for reading. If you're enjoying it, please let me know, and if you think I could improve it – tell me and I can work on it. I'm trying very hard to become a better writer, so any pointers would be welcome. Sometimes I think that might be the problem anyway – trying too hard. So maybe I'll stop caring and get on with it. _

_Next chapter should be up in a week, or less if I get around to it faster. Thanks_

_#_


	4. In the Loop

4. In the Loop.

Maybe the past is best left alone. Maybe there is a good reason I can't remember a year of my life. Jonno sounded shaky and scared and he said his Dad is dead. I know Mr Van Helsing hasn't been in school for a while, but no one said he was…dead.

My thick head is trying hard to make a connection. I've had all these words and names thrown at me lately, names and words that are meaningless, disconnected. Despite this, I feel like they are linked, and it's me who is disconnected.

I take a seat on my usual bench at the far end of school and pretend to think. I don't feel like going to sixth. I feel like freeing myself from all of this, from my family, from school, from these forgotten memories that grip me and pin me down. Maybe the only way I can do it is to stay here on this bench not thinking, remaining alone in smurry silence.

Time passes. Bells ring. No one comes by. I remain alone.

My anticipation doesn't let me down. Someway through seventh a figure emerges from the drizzle and comes over to me. She doesn't say anything, merely stands in front of me and glares.

I close my eyes. "You said you wanted to stay in the loop. So I'm using my lasso and I'm bringing you in." I open my eyes. "Unless you're pulling back that request? Because I can probably operate alone, if I have to."

Her glare does not soften, she just stares. I take it as a green light.

"I am going to say some names and words. Tell me if they connect."

"Mrs Harper pulled me out of class. She wants to know why you've not been to lessons this afternoon."

I give her back her stare. "Ingrid."

Chloe considers me a while. I'm not going anywhere, I have all the time in the world. I've been waiting all through sixth and most of seventh, so I can wait a little longer. I lean back and make myself comfortable.

Chloe folds and sits beside me, working her lip with her braceless teeth. "…Ingrid?" Her voice is tired. She's only doing this because she thinks her little big brother has a screw loose and she thinks that she might be able to tighten it by playing on my court. "Isn't that the name of the girl who used to live in the castle? The daughter of that haughty uppity Lord?"

I straighten up and dart my eyes over to the granite hill and the building growing out of it. "Castle was one of the words." I say it quietly, to myself, and then dial up the volume to include Chloe. "No one lives there though, right?"

"I think they moved out. I'm not certain. Sometimes I see lights or hear music. People come and go from there. But I always thought that place was long abandoned and the local hoodies use it for skins parties."

"I heard that too. So the girl who lived there was called Ingrid?"

"I don't even know if that's her name. What's this all about, Robin?"

I ignore that and try the next name on for size. "How about Vlad?"

"Look, I don't know. If you wanted to play word games why don't we play a round of scrabble when we get home?"

"I prefer boggle myself."

"Boggle then. Sounds good. I expect Dad and the twins will want a round when they get back from work too. There's ten minutes of seventh lesson left, then tutor and the drive home. I'll let you borrow my dictionary and you can swot up in between times." She pulls her bag off her shoulder and onto her lap, delving a hand into it.

I grab her arm and lean in close. My voice cuts like sharpened flint. "Quit messing around, Chloe. This is important. People are in danger."

She drops the dictionary back into her bag. "Danger? What kind of danger?"

"I dunno yet." I let go of her arm and sit back again, slotting hands into pockets. "Something to do with all these disappearances, the large number of people found dead and drained of blood, the missing memories. And some words that I can't find any connection between. Words like Ingrid, Vlad, the castle, slay, stakes. So yeah, I want to play a word game; a word game where the outcome means more than a triple word score. So put your thinking gap on, my boffin of a sister. Find what links these words."

"Stakes? Like in a bet?"

I shrug and repeat the words as I remember them. "'She's playing with the stakes' was what he said." I'm not sure that was exactly it, but it's close and it's all I have.

"Who said? Come on, Robin. If you want my help you're going to have to fill me in a bit." She shoots me an expression borrowed from mam when she's one thread from snapping.

I consider telling Chloe everything, about the weird conversations. I get really close, the words forming on my tongue. But at the last minute I clam up and redraft. "Look, Chloe, I'm not sure yet. It feels like this could get heavy. It's already heavy. And I'm not sure what I'm stepping into, but I'm pretty sure it's nasty. I don't want to pull you down with me. So you're just going to have to ride in the sidecar and trust me to lead the way. I can't give you all the details because if you know them all then maybe it's bad news for you. I can't have my little sister in any sort of danger. I don't want to be the person who puts you into it." I tilt my head back against the back of the bench.

"That's hardly fair! If you want me in the loop you have to tell me what you know."

"You were the one who requested to be in 'the loop'. I could do with your help. You have more than half a head on you and I could use you. But I won't give you information that I don't think you need, that I think might lead into danger." I edge my eyes across to hers and wait for some kind of response. She just glares at me. "So what's your status on this? Are you going to help me operate this from the sidelines, or do you want out altogether?"

"I can't say I like it. Don't you think it's safer for me to be clued in? If you're getting yourself into danger it's likely to involve me. I don't like the sound of any of it…"

"It's the way it is. If it gets too hot and I think things are about to blow I'll give you plenty of warning. So are you in or are you out?"

She clenches her teeth and makes a small animal sound. "I asked that you involve me, and now you are so I have to say I'm in."

"Yeah, you do."

She sighs and leans into the bench, face hardening into concentration.

"There is something that springs to mind. I can't believe you've not made the connection between all these words. Slay, stake, castle, people drained of blood, weird Eastern European names."

I'm not following and I think my ruffled forehead says that loud and clear. She rolls her eyes, leans down and snatches my bag. She plunges her hand in, what comes out is a book and it's not a dictionary. "Come _on _Robin. All you ever watch is that Buffy stuff, that Hellsing anime, Underworld, Twilight." She waves the book like a windscreen wiper.

I speak through my teeth. "I got it out of the library for a laugh, to piss off all the zombies on the reserve list."

She raises a thin eyebrow. My eye twitches and I snatch my bag, pulling out a near-empty bottle of coke and taking a long drink.

She gives me a smile and slips the book into my bag. "So what do all of these things have in common?"

I think about it for a moment, swilling the coke around my mouth, feeling an ulcer tingle into a raw smear. "Vampires. But what have fictional characters got to do with this situation I am finding myself in?"

"That is something I don't know. You refuse to tell me the whole story. You asked me to connect the words. I have done. So that's that." She's got a point there.

I screw the cap back on and throw the empty bottle into my bag. "Alright then. Fine. One more thing: there are other people in this town who lost their memories."

"Who?"

"Jonno, his mum and his dad." I list them on my fingers. "Is it just me; or is that a lot of people in one small town to suffer from lacunar amnesia?"

"It is somewhat strange. But coincidences can happen."

"It doesn't sit right with me. How can two whole families suddenly get gaping holes in their memories? One day we're all as normal as the Branaghs or Van Helsings could ever hope to be, and the next; memories like Swiss cheese."

"When exactly did we lose ours? Can you even pin-point that kind of thing?" she asks.

I run it through my mind. Mostly matter sloshes through the Swiss cheese holes, but one thing is too big and the holes catch it like the mesh of a sieve. "That Scout Cabaret. The one where Dad made us dress up as the 'Five a Day Family'"

"I think that's just your own head trying to forget the fact that you danced around all evening dressed as a pineapple," she laughs.

I thump her in the arm and give her my best sneer.

"Ow!" she pulls a face at me and cradles her arm.

"I'm sure that was when I realised that I had no idea what I had been doing earlier that day, or the day before, or any time before that since the start of year 8. And we gave a lift to that strange guy who kept talking to his wrist. Remember him?"

She thinks back on it and hesitantly nods. "Vaguely."

"He kept asking me where he was and how he got there. We took him to the hospital in the end because he really couldn't remember anything at all, other than his name was Burt, or Kurt or something. Mam was really worried." My brain is working really hard right now, tugging at the loose threads in my memory. Something comes back to me all of a sudden, hitting me like a dropped stone. It's not something from the year I lost, but from a few weeks after I realised my memory was shot. "He showed up dead not very long after that. It was in all the papers and Mam had a terrible time of it."

Chloe's eyes have that sheen in them, same as when her pen is in full flight on an essay. "That's right. She was very upset that we hadn't taken him in. His body disappeared in the morgue and they never found the body or who snatched it. It was really weird."

After that the number of deaths in Stokely took an upwards turn. That was when things started to get dark and scary around here. Bingo. I have a starting point. I press my lips together and take a look at my watch. 3:29pm.

The bell rings right on cue, subdued and a little sombre from this distance. Chloe jumps to her feet like the bench just bit her.

"I've missed half of seventh!"

"Well cheers anyway, Chloe. I've got a lot to chew on now," I say, getting to my feet.

She slings her bag on her shoulder and does the funny little half-walk half-run she does when she's late for something that's not as important as she thinks it is. I give her a tepid thumbs-up that she doesn't see, and then make my own way towards the main block.


End file.
